


Calendar Girl

by rowofstars



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Post-Episode AU: s02e13 Doomsday
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-04-29
Updated: 2009-04-29
Packaged: 2018-04-19 06:12:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4735475
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rowofstars/pseuds/rowofstars
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Counting, waiting and coping. Rose Tyler, post-Doomsday.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Calendar Girl

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks again to [](http://anepidemic.livejournal.com/profile)[anepidemic](http://anepidemic.livejournal.com/) for the beta. This fic was written because I had writer's block about my series and because I couldn't get a song out of my head. The song is Calendar Girl by Stars.

There are Xs in squares across a page.

There are seven squares across and four, sometimes five, down. The marks march slowly left to right filling each row in succession. Diagonal from corner to corner in thin black ink, the lines smell faintly like magic marker, sharp and acrid. Each one is a step, a footprint left behind on the path. The path has no destination. Its only purpose is the successive counting of days, moving at the pace of the clouds. It’s a reminder that she’s still here. She’s still here. It’s a place she fits but doesn’t belong, like a round peg in a square hole.

There are stacks of pages in a desk drawer.

They curl slightly from the bottom right corner to the top left. It’s the way she tears them off when they’re full. She doesn’t bother to flatten them. November has a crease across the middle and the darkest, thickest lines. It was the first page and she was angry. Now it’s June and there is still a sentence left unfinished. She feels lighter but more determined. Progress is slow, but made nonetheless. Sometimes it leaves her frustrated and melancholy, but after six hundred and thirty nine Xs she’s almost used to it.

There is a black marker lying quietly in the middle of a desk.

It’s the fifth one. Every time she uses it the smell fills her lungs and the corners of her mouth dip. The pop and click of the cap on and off is like the tick tock of time passing. She’s still here and not there. But in the meantime she’s been other places, jumping here and there, trying not to leave too many holes behind. She stays only long enough to conclude right or wrong, and sometimes to try the chips, as she still counts the days forward.

There is a dream that she has sometimes.

In the morning her mind is too frayed to remember but she always feels the loss more. She knows he was there. With her eyes shut she can almost see him but when she pushes to get closer he moves further away. On occasion when she blinks in and out of another wrong place, she’ll catch a glimpse of a man in a long brown coat. She turns to follow him just as he fades away. He’s always fading away.

There is a woman with ginger hair who turned right instead of left.

Now things are falling apart and the stars are burning out. It’s definitely wrong and it’s exactly what she’s been waiting for. She doesn’t tell the woman her name, only two fateful words whose meaning he can’t mistake. She’s learned the hard way about crossing timelines and saying too much. But she can forgive herself if they can save the universe just one last time. With the warning and invitation delivered, and all she can do is wait for the right moment. She’ll know when it happens.

And the days will stop needing to be counted.

 


End file.
